Method of load balancing edge-enabled applications in a content delivery network (CDN)

ABSTRACT

A method and system of load balancing application server resources operating in a distributed set of servers is described. In a representative embodiment, the set of servers comprise a region of a content delivery network. Each server in the set typically includes a server manager process, and an application server on which edge-enabled applications or application components are executed. As service requests are directed to servers in the region, the application servers manage the requests in a load-balanced manner, and without any requirement that a particular application server spawned on-demand.

This application is a continuation of Ser. No. 12/701,965, filed Feb. 8, 2010, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,131,835, which application is a continuation of Ser. No. 10/823,871, filed Apr. 14, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,660,896, which application was based on and claimed priority to Ser. No. 60/463,071, filed Apr. 15, 2003.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Technical Field

The present invention relates generally to execution of Web-based applications in a content delivery network.

2. Description of the Related Art

Enterprises can expand their business, increase efficiency, and enable new revenue streams by extending their business applications over the Internet to customers, partners, and suppliers. One way to enable enterprises to shift the operational burden of running a reliable and secure Web presence is to outsource that presence, in whole or in part, to a service provider, such as a content delivery network (CDN). A content delivery network is a collection of content servers and associated control mechanisms that offload work from Web site origin servers by delivering content (e.g., Web objects, streaming media, HTML and executable code) on their behalf to end users. Typically, the content servers are located at the “edge” of the Internet. A well-managed CDN achieves this goal by serving some or all of the contents of a site's Web pages, thereby reducing the customer's infrastructure costs while enhancing an end user's browsing experience from the site. In operation, the CDN uses a request routing mechanism to locate a CDN edge server electronically close to the client to serve a request directed to the CDN. Sites that use a CDN benefit from the scalability, superior performance, and availability of the CDN service provider's outsourced infrastructure.

Many enterprises, such as those that outsource their content delivery requirements, also implement their business services as multi-tier (n-tier) applications. In a representative n-tiered application, Web-based technologies are used as an outer (a first or “presentation”) tier to interface users to the application, and one or more other tiers comprise middleware that provides the core business logic and/or that integrates the application with existing enterprise information systems. The Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE™) is a technology and an associated component-based model that reduces the cost and complexity of developing such multi-tier, enterprise services. The J2EE runtime environment defines several types of application components that can be used to build services. These include (a) Web tier components (e.g., servlets, JSP pages, Java beans, filters, and web event listeners), which are components that typically execute in a web server and respond to HTTP requests from web clients, and (b) Enterprise tier components (e.g., session beans, entity beans and message driven beans, which may be developed as Enterprise JavaBeans™ (EJB™)), that include the business logic and that execute in a managed environment to support transactions. Runtime support for J2EE application components are provided by so-called “containers,” with a Web container supporting the Web tier components, and an Enterprise container supporting the Enterprise tier components. Containers execute the application components and provide utility services. J2EE-compliant servers provide deployment, management and execution support for conforming application components.

The provisioning of server-side Java applications or application components to run on CDN edge servers presents complex deployment and operational issues. A solution is described in commonly-owned, copending application Ser. No. 10/340,206, filed Jan. 10, 2003, titled “Java Application Framework For Use In A Content Delivery Network.” According to that application, given edge servers in the CDN are provisioned with application server code used to execute Web tier components of an application (an “edge-enabled application”). In an illustrative embodiment, these application servers (appserver) are run out of process from a CDN server manager process, preferably one for every customer. Child appserver processes are forked/exec'd from the CDN server manager process, after which they are tightly monitored and controlled by a Java Manager subsystem. The CDN server manager process forwards a client request that requires appserver processing over local TCP socket to a child appserver process, which processes the request, and sends the response on the same connection. In addition, resource utilization load is reported from each appserver process, preferably across a shared memory segment, to the Java Manager subsystem. The Java Manager subsystem tightly monitors resource utilization of each child appserver process and will kill appserver processes that over utilize resources.

Java application servers typically are started on-demand, as in-bound requests are mapped to web applications (sometime referred to as “webapps”). Each application server process may also map to a content provider (i.e., a customer) code, so if an in-bound request maps to a webapp on a customer code for which no application server process is running, a new application server process may be started. Once started, the webapp can be installed in this application server process, and once installed, the request can be serviced.

If application server processes continue to spawn on demand, resources on the machine may start to run out so that it may not be possible to start another application server process on that machine. Because application servers may take on the order of 30-60 seconds to start and load, and because web applications can also take on the order of 10-20 seconds to load, misses for application processing requests can expensive from a request latency perspective. Indeed, spawning application servers in an on-demand fashion may lead the CDN server manager process into an undesirable state, where it is launching an application server for each new customer code that is requested, and it may deny service to requests when it hits a resource limit.

The present invention addresses this problem.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

For a more complete understanding of the present invention and the advantages thereof, reference should be made to the following Detailed Description taken in connection with the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a known content delivery network in which the present invention may be implemented;

FIG. 2 illustrates a typical machine configuration for a CDN edge server;

FIG. 3 illustrates a typical machine configuration for a CDN edge server that is provisioned to executed edge-enabled applications or application components; and

FIG. 4 illustrates a cluster of CDN servers in which the load-balancing technique of the present invention may be implemented.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

The present invention leverages Internet CDN architecture and functionality such as generally described below. Familiarity with Java programming conventions and the J2EE architecture are presumed. Additional information about J2EE is available in the publication titled Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition Specification v1.3 (July 2001), which is available from Sun Microsystems.

By way of background, it is known in the prior art to deliver digital content (e.g., HTTP content, streaming media and applications) using an Internet content delivery network (CDN). A CDN is a network of geographically-distributed content delivery nodes that are arranged for efficient delivery of content on behalf of third party content providers. Typically, a CDN is implemented as a combination of a content delivery infrastructure, a DNS request-routing mechanism, and a distribution infrastructure. The content delivery infrastructure usually comprises a set of “surrogate” origin servers that are located at strategic locations (e.g., Internet network access points, Internet Points of Presence, and the like) for delivering content to requesting end users. The request-routing mechanism allocates servers in the content delivery infrastructure to requesting clients in a way that, for web content delivery, minimizes a given client's response time and, for streaming media delivery, provides for the highest quality. The distribution infrastructure consists of on-demand or push-based mechanisms that move content from the origin server to the surrogates. An effective CDN serves frequently-accessed content from a surrogate that is optimal for a given requesting client. In a typical CDN, a single service provider operates the request-routers, the surrogates, and the content distributors. In addition, that service provider establishes business relationships with content publishers and acts on behalf of their origin server sites to provide a distributed delivery system.

As seen in FIG. 1, an Internet content delivery infrastructure usually comprises a set of “surrogate” origin servers 102 that are located at strategic locations (e.g., Internet network access points, and the like) for delivering copies of content to requesting end users 119. A surrogate origin server is defined, for example, in IETF Internet Draft titled “Requirements for Surrogates in the HTTP” dated Aug. 9, 2000, which is incorporated herein by reference. The request-routing mechanism 104 allocates servers 102 in the content delivery infrastructure to requesting clients. The distribution infrastructure consists of on-demand or push-based mechanisms that move content from the origin server to the surrogates. A CDN service provider (CDNSP) may organize sets of surrogate origin servers as a group or cluster, sometimes called a “region.” In this type of arrangement, a CDN region 106 typically comprises a set of one or more content servers that share a common back-end network, e.g., a LAN, and that are located at or near an Internet access point. A typical CDN region may be co-located within an Internet Service Provider (ISP) Point of Presence (PoP) 108 or some other data center. A “region” need not be associated with or imply any geographic association. A representative CDN content server is a Pentium-based caching appliance running an operating system (e.g., Linux-based, Windows NT, Windows 2000) and having suitable RAM and disk storage for CDN applications and content delivery network content (e.g., HTTP content, streaming media and applications). Such content servers are sometimes referred to as “edge” servers as they are located at or near the so-called outer reach or “edge” of the Internet. An “edge” server need not be associated with or imply any particular geographic association, however. The CDN typically also includes network agents 109 that monitor the network as well as the server loads. These network agents are typically co-located at third party data centers or other locations. Mapmaker software 107 receives data generated from the network agents and periodically creates maps that dynamically associate IP addresses (e.g., the IP addresses of client-side local name servers) with the CDN regions.

Content may be identified for delivery from the CDN using a content migrator or rewrite tool 106 operated, for example, at a participating content provider server. Tool 106 rewrites embedded object URLs to point to the CDNSP domain. A request for such content is resolved through a CDNSP-managed DNS to identify a “best” region, and then to identify an edge server within the region that is not overloaded and that is likely to host the requested content. Instead of using content provider-side migration (e.g., using the tool 106), a participating content provider may simply direct the CDNSP to serve an entire domain (or subdomain) by a DNS directive (e.g., a CNAME). In either case, the CDNSP may provide object-specific metadata to the CDN content servers to determine how the CDN content servers will handle a request for an object being served by the CDN. Metadata, as used herein, refers to a set of control options and parameters for the object (e.g., coherence information, origin server identity information, load balancing information, customer code, other control codes, etc.), and such information may be provided to the CDN content servers via a configuration file, in HTTP headers, or in other ways. The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of an object that is served from the CDN in this manner does not need to be modified by the content provider. When a request for the object is made, for example, by having an end user navigate to a site and select the URL, a customer's DNS system directs the name query (for whatever domain is in the URL) to the CDNSP DNS request routing mechanism. Once an edge server is identified, the browser passes the object request to the server, which applies the metadata supplied from a configuration file or HTTP response headers to determine how the object will be handled.

As also seen in FIG. 1, the CDNSP may operate a metadata transmission system 116 comprising a set of one or more servers to enable metadata to be provided to the CDNSP content servers. The system 116 may comprise at least one control server 118, and one or more staging servers 120 a-n, each of which is typically an HTTP server (e.g., Apache). Metadata is provided to the control server 118 by the CDNSP or the content provider (e.g., using a secure extranet application) and periodically delivered to the staging servers 120 a-n. The staging servers deliver the metadata to the CDN content servers as necessary. Of course, any other convenient data transport mechanism may be used to deliver the customer metadata to the CDN servers.

FIG. 2 illustrates a typical machine configuration for a CDN edge server. Typically, the content server 200 is a caching appliance running an operating system kernel 202, a file system cache 204, server manager software 206, TCP connection manager 208, and disk storage 210. Server manager software 206, among other things, creates and manages a “hot” object cache 212 for popular objects being served by the CDN. It may also provide other CDN-related functions, such as request routing, in-region load balancing, and the like. In operation as an HTTP cache for example, the content server 200 receives end user requests for content, determines whether the requested object is present in the hot object cache or the disk storage, serves the requested object via HTTP (if it is present) or establishes a connection to another content server or an origin server to attempt to retrieve the requested object upon a cache miss. Typically, the edge server operates in a “pull” manner, wherein an object is pulled into the cache initially upon the first request to the cache—which will generate a cache miss since the object is not present. This is not required, however, as content may be pushed into the server before it is requested for the first time.

The CDN also includes an application framework comprising, for example, at least one region of application server-enabled edge servers. In such case, a given edge server (the machine) such as illustrated above in FIG. 2 also includes application server code. As is well-known, an application server is a software platform (sometimes called middleware) on which applications can be deployed. It provides useful utility services and functions to applications. There are currently several major types of application servers, Java-based (J2EE) and Microsoft .NET. Java, of course, is a programming language and a platform, and the programming language is object-oriented and platform independent. Applications written in Java are translated into Java byte code, which code is then run on (interpreted by) a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). In one embodiment, the present invention takes advantage of given edge servers in the CDN that are provisioned with application server and additional code to enable applications or application components to be executed from the edge of the Internet. The framework can take advantage of and leverage the mapping, load-balancing and management systems used with known CDN offerings, such as the CDN illustrated in FIG. 1 (which is merely representative). In a first embodiment, the application server is a servlet container (e.g., Apache Tomcat), to enable offloading and execution of the Web tier of n-tier Java-based applications. JSP, servlets, Java beans and custom tags, which are executed within an application server's servlet container, are executed at the edge of the Internet, close to the end-user. The Web tier is typically the front end of a J2EE server. In an alternate embodiment, in addition to the Web tier, at least some or all of the Enterprise tier of the application is also deployed to and executed on a given edge server. The Enterprise or “business” tier typically hosts application-specific business logic and provides system-level services such as transaction management, concurrency control, and security. Further details of a preferred Java-based application framework are described in copending, commonly-owned Ser. No. 10/340,206, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference.

FIG. 3 illustrates a representative edge server architecture for a CDN server in the edge-enabled application region(s). A given region includes one or more of such servers that are interconnected over a common back-end LAN, as previously described. The server 300 preferably runs on commodity hardware running an operating system (e.g., a modified form of Linux) 302. The Java stack includes a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) 304 and preferably a J2EE-compliant application server 306. For Web tier components, the application server 306 may be implemented with Apache Tomcat servlet container. In particular, a representative Web container is provided by Apache Tomcat servlet container, which uses the JVM in JDK 1.3.1_(—)04 available from Sun Microsystems. Of course, these components are merely exemplary and are not meant to be limiting. For Web tier and Enterprise tier components, the application server 306 may be implemented with IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS), such as Version 5.0 application server (WAS). IBM WebSphere uses JVM (Java Virtual Machine) 1.3.1,. These products, of course, are merely exemplary. The framework (preferably the JVM) creates and maintains application sandboxes 308 for each of the applications 310 a-n. A given customer may run application 310 a, while another customer runs application 310 b. Generalizing, the edge server 300 supports one or more discretely-executable applications. The edge server 300 implements a cache 312 and maintains customer configuration data 314 that controls when application components are used. The server manager 316 overlays and controls the cache, using the customer configuration data. System management 318 and system security 320 modules are also provided to facilitate these and other functions.

As illustrated in FIG. 4, the CDN includes at least a first edge server region 400 having one or more edge servers 402 a-n provisioned with an application framework on which edge-enabled applications or application components are executed. A given edge server 402 is illustrated in FIG. 3. Instead of trying to load every application on every machine, a new load balancing scheme is described below that uses server resources more intelligently across the content delivery network. Because the cost of starting application servers and loading applications is much, much higher than retrieving a typical static object (from origin or from cache peer/parent), it is much better to send requests for a particular application to a server that already has the application loaded.

According to the invention, when a edge server manager process receives a request for which it does not have the application loaded, it does not try to load the application. Rather, the request is forwarded (e.g., by tunneling) to others machines that have the application loaded. In this way, network resources are much better utilized and denial of service is avoided. To enable a CDN server manager process to tunnel, preferably it is provided a global view of “what is loaded where” in its particular region. In addition, the server manager process preferably is provided with information about what the “desired” state of “what should be loaded where”. These are the basic premises around the load balancing scheme described herein.

With the above as background, the following terms are now defined:

Appserver: A Java application server or servlet container that complies with a given specification, such as the Servlet Specification of Sun Microsystems. This is a Java program that runs in a JVM, and hosts the execution of Java-based webapps.

Webapps: Java applications as defined by a given specification, such as the Sun Microsystems Servlet Specification. A typical Java application is a combinations of servlets, JSPs, static resources, and class library jar archives.

WAR file: A Web Application aRchive (WAR) file, which contains all of the necessary class files, static resources, JSPs, and jars necessary to run a webapp.

Java heap: Each JVM instance may manage an internal block of memory, in which it allocates and garbage collects Java objects. The maximum and minimum size of this heap preferably is configurable, and it is set when the JVM is initialized. Note that the Java heap typically is part of the memory used by the appserver process, and it is reported to a given process (which is called DNSP as described below) as such.

Appserver process size: This is the total memory used by the appserver process, and typically it includes the memory used by the Java heap, internal JVM data structures, and the like.

Overview

As illustrated in FIG. 4 and by way of additional background, each server 402 a-402 n in a given server region 400 includes several processes: a CDN server manager process 404, a monitor process 406, and an aggregator process 408. These processes are shown as distinct and independent, but this is not a requirement. The server manager 404 publishes metadata and resource utilization information for webapps and appserver processes to the monitor process 406. The monitor process 406 windows this data, publishes query tables based on this data, and also publishes this data (preferably over UDP transport) to the aggregator process 408. Process 408 acts as the global aggregator of data related to webapps and appservers from each CDN server manager in the region. The aggregator process 408 preferably keeps state as to which webapps are running on which CDN server manager, and it publishes this information in a first map (or other data construct) to each CDN server manager running in the region 400. This map tells each CDN server manager “what is loaded where,” and it allows a particular CDN server manager to implement a communication policy (e.g., tunneling) based on this map. The aggregator process 408 also preferably implements a load balancing algorithm from which the output is a second map that is published over the same communication channel. This second map tells the CDN server manager “what should be loaded where,” and it allows the CDN server manager to implement a webapp loading policy based on this second map. Using the second map, the aggregator process 408 can ask a given CDN server manager running on a give machine to load a webapp, e.g., by adding that webapp to this second map for that CDN server manager, or by “mapping” that webapp to that CDN server manager.

The following policies may then be implemented to facilitate load balancing:

-   -   Request Tunneling Policy—based on the maps received from the         aggregator process, a given CDN server manager may implement the         following tunneling policy:         -   1. mapped and loaded—route the request to a CDN server             manager that has the application loaded and for which the             aggregator process has that application mapped;         -   2. loaded, but not mapped—route the request to a CDN server             manager that has the application loaded, even if it is not             mapped;         -   3. deny—send an error page to the user, and deny service to             the request.

Alternatively, tunnel this request to another region where there is support.

-   -   Webapp Loading Policy—based on the maps received from the         aggregator process, a given CDN server manager may implement the         following webapp loading policy:         -   1. load if mapped—if a webapp is “mapped” by the aggregator             process for the machine IP on which the given CDN server             manager is executing, then aggressively load this webapp;         -   2. unload if unmapped—if the aggregator process has removed             a webapp id for the IP address on which the given CDN server             manager is executing, then uninstall this webapp from the             appserver in which it is running.

The following is a more detailed design of the load balancing algorithm:

There is no requirement that application components be fully or partially J2EE-compliant, or even that the subject matter be implemented entirely in Java. Indeed, the present invention is also extensible beyond Java and J2EE. In particular, the inventive concepts may be practiced in any platform-independent application server programming environment (e.g., Microsoft .NET, Mod Perl executing in Apache, Zope, or the like) capable of being deployed in a distributed computing environment such as a content delivery network.

What is claimed is as follows: 

1. Apparatus, comprising: a processor, computer memory holding computer program instructions executed by the processor to perform a load balancing method, the method comprising: for each of a set of machines that is provisioned with a manager process and an application server on which one or more web applications are loaded and executed, identifying a resource usage value; using the values to generate a weighted mapping of web applications to manager processes for the set of machines such that the resource usage value for each machine is not exceeded, and wherein the weighted mapping of web applications to manager processes balances a given resource value across the set of machines; servicing requests at the machines in proportion to the weighted mapping; and selectively re-generating the weighted mapping of web applications to manager processes for the set of machines if the resource usage values across the set of machines becomes unbalanced.
 2. The apparatus as described in claim 1 wherein the resource usage value is an arbitrary unit of work representing resource usage on the machine.
 3. The apparatus as described in claim 2 wherein the resource usage value is (i) a flit-capacity, and (ii) a memory capacity, where a flit is an arbitrary unit of work representing resource usage on the machine.
 4. The apparatus as described in claim 1 wherein the weighted mapping of web applications to manager processes is also a function of application server memory capacity on each machine.
 5. The apparatus as described in claim 1 wherein the resource usage value represents non-bandwidth resource usage at a machine.
 6. The apparatus as described in claim 3 wherein the flit is CPU utilization.
 7. The apparatus as described in claim 1 wherein the weighted mapping of web applications to manager processes requires a given web application to be loaded onto the machine.
 8. The apparatus as described in claim 1 wherein the weighted mapping of web applications to manager processes requires a given web application to be unloaded from the machine.
 9. The apparatus as described in claim 1 wherein the set of machines are co-located. 